As he awakened, the first thing Eric noticed was the cold.
He opened his eyes slowly, feeling the first twinges of pain beginning to spread across his body. Darkness surrounded him, and a clammy blanket of cold seemed to envelop his entire body. Then, even as his awareness sluggishly rose from the fugue of unconsciousness, the pain suddenly spiked, and reflexively, Eric screamed.
It was a strangled, animal sound of panic and confusion, Eric’s entire body spasming in reaction to his sudden return to consciousness. His hands slammed down and his heels drummed on the rough, strangely metallic surface he was sprawled over as the wave of agony coursed through his tortured nervous system.
Slowly, the torturous sensations lessened to tolerable levels, and Eric curled into a ball, groans escaping his clenched teeth as he recovered his breath. None of his built-in pain-dampeners or bio-stim implants were working, something that had never happened in all his years in combat. Something was very, very wrong. After an indeterminate amount of time, Eric felt recovered enough to sit up and take stock of his surroundings.
He was in a dark room with just enough ambient illumination that his enhanced eyesight could make out several features. The close, thick air was filled with the sound of harsh, irregular breathing, as well as the now familiar feeling of oppressive dragon dread. There was an unpleasant smell of blood and death in the air, so heavy that Eric found it hard to breath. He shook his head, his innate danger sense screaming at him to flee, fighting down the fear as well as the rising gorge in his throat.
“Pig?”
He waited, his panic growing the longer his AI remained silent. Cautiously, Eric leveraged himself into a crouch, his hands searching his body for any weapon he could use, finding the empty sheathe which should have held his boarding blade. Old, unwanted memories of cold and isolation surfaced, threatening to overwhelm him. His fingers trembled and clenched involuntarily, his confused, fear-addled brain making simple movements exceedingly difficult.
Eric fought to compose himself, trying to gain control of his breathing, remembering the calming exercises he had been taught after he had been recovered from that place. Slowly, slowly, he brought himself away from the edge, regaining some of his composure.
A small mail icon appeared and began blinking at the left side of his vision.
Curious despite his disorientation, Eric focused on it.
Suddenly a bright white window with a script of black text appeared in front of him, the whole thing glowing white against the surrounding gloom.
Your Gens has reached the required parameters for Integration.
Would you like to proceed? Yes/No
This was new: Pig had never interfaced with him in this way, preferring instead the far faster mediums of direct images or text. Although it was normally impossible to do so, had the fight with the dragon somehow damaged his AI?
“Pig, is that you?”
Again, there was no response.
Fighting against the steady pressure of fear and panic that shrouded his mind Eric struggled to keep his attention on the window. What in hellfire was a Gens? As soon as the thought crossed his mind the text changed, the letters dissolving and flowing together to create a new sentence.
A Gens allows an aspirant of the created races to assimilate, process, utilize, and develop the forms of aether.
Aether? He recognized the word but not its connotation. Besides, he had no recollection of having any sort of cybernetic system installed that would be able to interface with him in this way. To make sure Eric ran an unsteady hand through his short hair and skull, his questing fingers running over familiar ridges of scar tissue from injuries past, before stopping a moment over the small scar just behind his right ear. This was where the small device that housed Pig had been inserted and linked to his brain. Had something been damaged? Was he in some sort of simulated environment?
With a snarl Eric slammed his right fist into the floor he was crouched over. The sudden crushing pain, and the spots of blood left on the rough surface and his injured knuckles convinced him that this at least was real and not a simulation. Unless technology had developed enough to support even this level of immersion.
Bah! Eric shook his head, flicking away the blood from his knuckles with a shake of his hand. Real or not, there was nothing he could do about any of it at this moment.
Focus. Assess. Move on.
“PIG!!!”
He shouted, more to do something and relieve the oppressive fear than for any anticipation that his AI would hear. His shouted word echoed back, giving him a better spatial sense of size of the chamber, and he noticed the harsh breathing sound he had been hearing paused for a moment.
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Was he still in the facility?
He tried to remember the sequence of events, but could recall nothing after Serra triggered the detonation. Again, his attention drifted to the glowing window and its line of text. It had reverted to its original message.
Your Gens has reached the required parameters for Integration.
Would you like to proceed? Yes/No
Annoyed, Eric shrugged his shoulders and said. “Yes.”
Integration protocol is active. Compatibility assessment initiated.
The words formed and vanished so quickly that Eric could barely read them.
For a long minute Eric waited in anticipation, every sense straining, waiting for something, anything to happen. And waited. After a few minutes with no change in his circumstance Eric closed his eyes in exasperation and hung his head. The pounding headache returned with a vengeance, settling over his body like a cloak of misery. Was all this a hallucination? Perhaps he was lying broken and dying on the laboratory floor and his mind was playing tricks on him as the remaining minutes of his life ticked to a close?
The miasma of fear was insidious, and Eric could feel his will slowly crumbling under its onslaught. If his body was in any shape to do so he would have tried to make a run for it. Behind his closed eyelids, another glowing window with a new line of text materialized.
Error. Compatibility wildly divergent from expected basal parameters. Revising.
The strange message persisted until Eric willed it away with a snarl.
Stupid machine!
Whatever cybernetic enhancement had been haphazardly stuck into his wetware it sure as hellfire wasn’t working properly. His hands curled into shaking claws, and Eric wished he had someone he could strangle.
Focus.
With an effort of will Eric managed to calm himself enough to look around.
Perhaps his eyes had acclimatized to the lack of light but Eric found that he could make out more of his surroundings. He managed to rise slowly to his feet, his brain idly noting several injuries that he had sustained. There was something dark and breathing in front of him, something that was the source of his unreasoning sense of fear and panic.
Then his eyes widened as his brain finally realized what he was looking at.
The massive bulk of the dragon’s torso rose up before him. It was a mangled, bleeding mass of flesh and protruding bone, though parts of the mass glowed slightly with residual energy, the only source of light within the wide, high-ceilinged room. There was no sign of its hindquarters amongst the blood and gore. Did the explosion shatter the creature in half? Amazed at the scale of the damage, his gaze followed the dragon’s long, sinuous neck as it traced a gradual slope to his left, its once-sleek length now marred by ragged wounds and broken scales all the way down to the creature’s horned head.
Surprisingly, the dragon still lived, though it was surely dying in slow, agonizing increments. There was just too much damage for it to be otherwise. Its heavy, labored breathing and juddering heartbeats were the source of the sound that reverberated throughout the chamber.
Then a familiar human-sized figure on the floor drew his attention.
Serra!
With a groan of effort Eric shambled forward, slamming to his knees before the body of his comrade, his fingers feeling for a pulse along Serra’s cold-fleshed neck.
He found it, thready and weak but still there, and Eric sighed with relief.
Serra was alive.
The realization gave him new strength and Eric did a quick assessment of his comrade’s status. Dark, congealing draconic blood covered her, and she was lying on a pool of it, but otherwise he didn’t see any major wounds. Her left arm and both her legs were limp and clearly broken, amazing given that her augmentations should have prevented any such injury from happening, but otherwise Serra was more or less intact.
With a burst of strength that left him dizzy Eric managed to drag Serra’s unconscious form to one wall. He was afraid his rough handling would further damage her, but he judged that getting her away from the dying dragon she had blown up would probably be for the best. A quick search for other injuries yielded the small packet of ultradrenalin ampoules Serra always carried, miraculously unbroken inside their metal case, and a large folding knife hidden inside one of her combat boots.
Laying her out in as much comfort as he could, Eric then used the knife to cut strips from his shirt to at least stabilize her broken limbs before he placed his combat jacket over her still form. Satisfied, he had done as much as he could for the moment, Eric sank to the floor, trying to formulate a plan of action despite the steadily increasing throb that hammered through his head.
Without warning a shooting pain exploded behind Eric’s right ear, knocking him back against the wall before throwing him onto the floor. Flashes of colored light played over his open eyes, visions without form, moving faster than his eye could track. His fingers scrabbled upon the metal flooring and his stomach heaved as if trying to turn itself inside out. Every muscle in his body was twitching uncontrollably, and cold and warm flashes appeared in random places along his body.
Error. Compatibility wildly divergent from expected basal parameters. Revising.
The old message began to flash uncontrollably before Eric’s eyes, faster and faster as the seconds ticked by. He could hear someone screaming hoarsely on and on in the distance until finally his abused body gave up and dumped him into darkness.
Eric’s return to consciousness was slow but steady.
He was disembodied, floating in a black, empty space.
For an indeterminate length of time he hung there, unable to move, until a familiar window with dark letters began to appear within the darkness, floating about five feet from his face.
Divergent integration completed.
Gens parameters have been modified within accepted norms.
Do you wish to continue? Yes/No
Yes.
There was a rushing sensation and then Eric slammed back into his physical body, gasping for air. His throat felt raw and his muscles bruised all over, and there was the coppery taste of blood in his mouth. With a groan Eric tried to push himself up into a sitting position, leaning his back on the freezing wall. His face was sticky with saliva and sour bile, and he could not gain control of his shaking hands.
“What the hell…”
“Gens Integration is at 100 percent, sir. Points are available for distribution.”
“Pig? Is that you?” The AI’s mentally-projected voice was more mechanical than usual, but Eric could understand it clearly. Overwhelming joy and relief flooded through him in a wash of endorphins that temporarily eased his pains.
He was no longer alone.
Pig was online.